The present invention relates to voice communication equipment (VCE), being more particularly concerned with voice communication storage and playback systems connected with telephone lines and having facility for interconnecting the lines of a caller and subscriber for direct communication which may suffer reduced sound quality especially if routed in a circuitous manner.
Among current voice communication storage and forwarding systems adapted for simultaneous access by multiple users is the apparatus described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,573,140 issued to the common assignee of the present application, Voicetek Incorporated, and earlier patents referenced therein. The adaptation of such to enable more extended communication networking and an expanded mode of operation under the control of a host computer, to permit the voice communication equipment to "outdial", wherein a caller on an incoming line may be routed for direct connection with a party responding on a second line, is described. U.S. Pat. No. 4,663,777 also issued to the common assignee of the present application.
Such extended-communication modes of operation, however, suffer from problems also inherent in more general telephone networking, particularly when a call is routed in a way not generally anticipated by the network--for instance, a credit-card call from Newark airport to the credit card verification center in Kansas City for a called number in New York city--the extra distance resulting in poor sound quality that requires further signal amplification. For the use of such extended telephone networking with voice communication equipment (VCE), however, the problem is not simple. Ideally, every VCE sold should be capable of introducing such signal improvement, since traditional methods of boosting the signal involve complex and expensive devices, totally unacceptable to the market for voice communication equipment with storage and playback facilities.